GraphQL vs REST?

Hi. I'm creating

1. A simple, minimal portfolio website with <10 products (no-eccommerce).

2. E-commerce website with hundreds of digital file downloads.

These are my first web dev projects and I don't know which data fetching/mutating approach I should be learning?

GraphQL branding is attractive, though is it necessary for these websites? Perhaps the Portfolio websites (a few products) I should be using REST, and GraphQL for the larger website?

Or for the sake of saving time, should I just get familiar with GraphQL and apply that for all projects? Or will GraphQL lead to more complexity/errors and therefore a longer dev time for the simple websites that don't require it?

I assume I should skip the Local API approach as that isn't relevant outside of Payload and GraphQL/REST will be more valuable for my portfolio, if I apply for jobs?

Or are all of these fetch methods quick and simple to learn and it's much of a muchness which one I use? I see a lot of questions related to GraphQL.